1. Field of the Invention
The invention relates to an automation tool and a method for supporting the planning and implementation of an automated technical process.
2. Description of Related Art
Various programming languages for generating programs to control and/or monitor an automated technical process, some of which are also object-oriented, are known in the art. However, programming languages of this type and the so-called development environments that can be used in connection therewith are employed at a relatively late stage in the planning and implementation of an automated technical process. In fact, usually these programming languages or development environments are used for generating a control program. Generating the control program, however, is the last step in the planning and implementation of an automated technical process.
For example, before generating the control program, a technologist has to define the product with respect to the required starting products and/or materials, and a designer has to select the equipment (for example, e.g., machines, containers, transport means, etc.) required to produce the product. The control program is written by an automation specialist using the information provided by the technologist and the designer.
A drawback in this related art method and in the use of the known programming languages, development environments, etc., is that information needs to be transferred from one specialist to the next. In the process of such a transfer, information is often lost or distorted because each specialist has his or her own way of thinking about the automated technical process and uses his or her own language to describe the automated technical process.
In other words, production and automation specialists (hereinafter referred to as designers and automation specialists, respectively) are required to receive specifications from other specialists (hereinafter referred to as technologists) who define the characteristics of the product.
The technologist is the planner of the corresponding product and produces, for example, the model of a motor vehicle in the form of individual body parts with welds or other connecting points, or the formula for a drug. The technologist essentially thinks in terms of product features, market conditions, competition, economic efficiency, etc. Other important influencing factors for the technologist are criteria such as production times, production costs, and product innovations.
The designer is the planner of the production installation. The designer specifies machines and equipment to transport or handle and interconnect the body parts, or to provide, mix, and chemically or thermally influence the precursor materials of the drug. The designer essentially thinks in terms of physical processes or physical quantities. The designer takes into account items such as plant parts, (pipe) lines and (starting) materials or their movements or mobility.
The automation specialist plans the automation of the resulting technical process. The automation specialist creates a control program to control the machines or equipment, the transport and processing of the starting materials or products to ultimately produce the end product. The automation specialist essentially thinks in terms of digital quantities and final states or smaller independent units. The automation specialist considers control functions, time sequences, drives and driving elements, positions of moved or movable components in the process and states of the process. The automation specialist is familiar with so-called state graphs and is used to dividing the technical process into separable partial processes, with which the automation specialist deals successively. The automation specialist's way of thinking is, therefore, more oriented toward details than the overall context of the technical process.
Extensive coordination is required among the individual specialists. This coordination takes place at least between the technologist and the designer on the one hand and the designer and the automation specialist on the other. Distributing the tasks among several specialists who have different ways of thinking and who until now have each used different automation tools for their scope of responsibilities results in substantial problems, only a few of which will be identified below by way of example.
First and foremost, communication problems occur among the specialists involved. This is essentially due to the different language they use. Hence, communication primarily involves translated information, i.e., the designer, when trying to draw the automation specialist's attention to specific features of the mechanical system, attempts to think like the automation specialist and explain the problem in his language. If the designer fails to do this translation but uses his own language to describe the problem to the automation specialist, the automation specialist translates what he has heard or read into his own way of thinking. The example can of course be expanded to include every possible and meaningful communication among the specialists involved.
The consequence of this continuously required translation of information is a loss of information. For example, the designer may not, or only incompletely or incorrectly relay information to the automation specialist that he received from the technologist which is no longer particularly important to him. Such loss of information almost necessarily leads to inconsistencies in the data used. In addition, the coordination and discussions frequently required among the specialists involve a potential deadline problem and a substantial loss of time.